suraj.sun writes: RealNetworks has sued the owner of a website in The Netherlands for displaying a hyperlink to a competing freeware package. As the company seeks compensation for its claimed losses, the 26-year-old man is borrowing money from family to survive.

The case started in 2010 when RealNetworks demanded that the computers belonging to Hilbrand Edskes and his family be confiscated. A Dutch judge granted this in an ex-parte ruling, based on an alleged violation of copyright law and trademark law. The company claims that Edskes was hosting the infringing software. The move to secretly obtain the order was meant to ensure that evidence wasn’t deleted.

Edskes has a website, Codecpack.nl, that links to a wide variety of freeware programs. One of these is "Real Alternative", a competitor of the mediaplayer RealPlayer from RealNetworks.

However, Edskes wasn’t hosting the software, but just redirected to other sites for the actual download. The complaint turned out to be based on a hyperlink to the software. To date there have been two court sessions, and in December Edskes will have to testify under oath.